Recognizing the lifesaving benefits of smoke and other threat detectors, more and more consumers are installing these devices in their homes. Indeed, many municipalities have enacted building ordinances that require that smoke detectors be installed in new construction and in order to sell an existing home. Apartment buildings and other commercial structures typically also include such smoke detectors. While many commercial structures and many newly constructed single-family dwellings include centrally powered smoke detectors, i.e. powered from the main electrical system of the dwelling, almost all other smoke detectors installed by consumers are battery powered. Indeed, many centrally powered smoke detectors still include a backup battery so that the benefits of the detector are not lost during a power outage.
Unfortunately, while the life saving benefits of the smoke detectors cannot be discounted, such smoke detectors continue to be a source of annoyance at times for consumers. One source of annoyance results from the fact that most smoke detectors are installed on the ceiling or otherwise in a location that is not easily accessible by the average consumer without using a stepladder. Since many such smoke detectors are battery powered as discussed above, these batteries periodically need to be replaced. While most manufacturers recommend that the consumer periodically test the smoke detector to make sure that the batteries are still operational, many consumers do not follow these recommendations based primarily on the difficulty of reaching the smoke detector test button.
Recognizing that consumers often do not follow the manufacturer's recommendations for periodically testing the smoke detectors, most modern smoke detectors include battery monitoring circuitry. This battery monitoring circuitry determines the remaining charge left in the battery, and provides an audible indication, typically a periodic chirp, to alert the consumer that the battery in the smoke detector is nearly discharged. Unfortunately, this chirp can often occur at inconvenient times for the consumer, such as during the middle of the night, during dinner, etc. Since this chirping will continue until the consumer replaces the battery or until the battery is fully discharged and is no longer functional, such a feature, while critical to the maintenance of the lifesaving ability of the smoke detector, is very annoying to consumers.
Further, even if the consumer were willing to change the battery once the low battery chirping began, the consumer may not have any batteries on hand. Indeed, such chirping will be particularly annoying if it begins just after a consumer returns from a store where they could have purchased batteries should they have known that the battery in the smoke detector was getting low. Currently, however, until a consumer returns to a store and purchases and installs new batteries, the low battery warning chirping will continue.
As a result, consumers have been known to remove the battery from the smoke detector, rendering it inoperative, until they have an opportunity to return to the store to purchase batteries. This leaves the consumer in a very dangerous situation where the smoke detector has been rendered inoperative simply for the sake of stopping the incessant low battery chirp from annoying the consumer. This dangerous situation will continue until a consumer purchases and replaces the battery. However, since the smoke detector is typically located on the ceiling as discussed above, the consumer may soon forget that it has been rendered inoperative.
There exists a need, therefore, for a system that allows the consumer to exercise some measure of control over the low battery warning of a smoke or other threat detector, but which will not allow the consumer to completely forget about the low battery condition that will eventually result in the disablement of the smoke or other threat detector.